Internet Reputation Management Services for Future-Minded Businesses
Written by: Adam
January 8th, 2021
Table of Contents
Who Needs Internet Reputation Management Services?
How Important Are Online Reviews?
Going the DIY Route – Is it Really that Bad?
Addressing Negative Online Reviews
Step 1: Address the review directly
Step 2: Take the conversation offline
Step 3: Follow through.
Step 4: Request review removal (if appropriate)
Review Management You Can Trust
“Internet reputation management services.”
It is quite a mouthful to say. However, if you do business online or with people who research businesses online, then it’s something you need to be aware of.
You’ve probably worked hard to cultivate a reputation in your community for delivering quality products, services, and sales.
What you don’t know is that your online reputation could be telling a different story about your business. Even worse, you may not even know it’s happening.
Seriously!
When was the last time you Googled your business and read through the online reviews? You may have the idea that ignorance is bliss or that you should be above the fray. Unfortunately, that’s not how the world works anymore.
Did you know that 75 percent of customers check out your online reviews before deciding to do business with you? What do you think their decisions will be if your online profile is filled with negative reviews – and no response from you?
Managing your online reputation can be hard. Especially if you have no idea where to begin. You may not even realize there are negative things about your business floating around the World Wide Web.
That is where internet reputation management services come into the picture. We offer you the opportunity to restore your good name and help you lay the foundational building blocks of a good reputation and a better brand online.
Who Needs Internet Reputation Management Services?
If you operate a business today, you need to manage your online reputation. Even if you haven’t had a problem yet, the odds are good that you will soon need assistance managing your online reputation and restoring the good name of your business.
You might be wondering how much work is involved in managing your online reputation and if this is something you could do entirely on your own. The answer is that you can do this on your own.
The problem is that it is a time-consuming and consistently ongoing process. In other words, it will require a great deal of your time and energy to effectively manage your online reputation – especially if you don’t already have a solid foundation in place to work with.
You’ll need to first learn how to manage your reputation online. That includes finding out:
- How to find negative reviews about your business online.
- Ways to respond to negative reviews for favorable effect.
- How to seek the removal of negative reviews about your business.
- What to do if your initial efforts fail to produce the results you desire.
- How to make sure you’re building a positive reputation online at the same time.
That’s before you even get down to the nuts and bolts of actually following up on all these things. You’ll need to learn all this and more in order to effectively manage your online reputation.
The difference is that internet reputation management services do these things for you, saving you valuable time and mental energy to devote to the operation and improvement of your business.
How Important Are Online Reviews?
How important are reviews to the people who would be customers? According to conversion rate optimization firm, Invesp, 88 percent of consumers give online reviews the same degree of trust they would a recommendation from a friend.
This means you need to devote quite a bit of precious energy to maintaining positive reviews and ratings about your business on the web.
The bottom line is that all businesses could benefit from the use of internet reputation management services and the many benefits it provides, including:
- Establishing greater trust and credibility with potential customers.
- Building a better brand image for your business.
- Improving sales for your business organization.
- Ranking higher in the search engine results.
- Attracting top talent to join your team.
This is why reputation management is so important. By eliminating or mitigating the negative and accentuating the positive information about your business organization online, you can do all that is listed above and so much more. Reputation management services can help with that.
Perhaps the most important benefit of using a service to manage your online reputation is that your image on the web changes. The result is that you no longer have unaddressed negative reviews on the web. Negative reviews that are harming your business and your bottom line.
Going the DIY Route – Is it Really that Bad?
You can do the work yourself. It is a long and involved process. First, you need to create a positive web presence. For the most part that includes creating a trust-building and informative website about your business. Then you’ll need to make sure it is hosted sufficiently to handle your web traffic.
Then you’ll need to start a blog and continue quality content to your blog day after day. Plus, you will need to learn about search engine optimization for your website and blog, conduct keyword research to understand the search terms you need your content to target. All this is before you even begin to address the negative content on the web about your business.
As you can see, it’s not just one or two learning curves involved. It is a long and complex process that can take valuable time away from your business just to defend your business. Of course, all this serves to help you grow your business in the long run. It is worth the effort if you aren’t interested in working with a reputation management service to do the work on your behalf.
Addressing Negative Online Reviews
You really have two primary options for addressing negative reviews online. The first option is always the best. It involves going to the source of the negative view directly.
Step 1: Address the review directly
Address the review directly on the review site representing your company and ask the customer what you can do to turn their negative experience into something positive.
What does this accomplish?
Actually, it meets quite a few needs.
- It shows the larger internet audience that you are willing and even eager to resolve the problem (more often than not how you respond is more important than the initial complaint to people reading reviews).
- It lets the person know you want to make things right. This is huge when legitimate complaints are levied against your business
- The response of the reviewer can reveal much about their true intentions as well. Sometimes these reviews are left with ulterior motives in mind.
Step 2: Take the conversation offline
If the reviewer responds and appears willing to engage in a dialogue with you, take the conversation private to find out exactly how you can make things right.
Step 3: Follow through.
This is perhaps the most important part of the plan. You must be willing to do what it takes to resolve the issue. Or you must decide that the customer is asking for too much.
Step 4: Request review removal (if appropriate)
Once the issue is resolved and the customer appears to be satisfied, you may choose to request that the customer remove the negative review about your business.
Depending on the other party, this is a process that can be resolved in a matter of minutes or one that can take a little bit of time and effort to resolve. Keep in mind you will need to do this for each negative review made about your business online.
The second option to consider is a less desirable option because it is far from guaranteed to work. In other words, you could be going through the process without yielding any results. In most likelihood, this process will fail but there are times when it is worth the effort.
What is it?
You can go to the website that hosts the negative review and request that they remove the negative review.
There is a process for it with most of these websites though removals are quite rare indeed. In fact, they have independent reviewers that conduct research before determining whether they will remove the review or not.
If they grant your request, the offending review will be removed at once. If now, the negative review remains in place.
All these steps require attention to find the negative revies, time to address the reviews, and more – all while the negative reviews remain in place damaging the reputation of your business.
Review Management You Can Trust
Hiring an online reputation management service like Net Reputation allows us to dedicate the full force of our resources to defending your internet reputation. We will work with you to develop a plan of action to remove negative reviews, increase positive information about your business, and help your business thrive, including methods that are secrets to our organization. Contact Net Reputation today and let us get to work restoring your good name on the World Wide Web right away.
